EDNY COURTHOUSE, Sept 30 – On the Eastern
District of New York's public courtroom calendar for July
7 was an entry with no name: "* SEALED *," 2:00 p.m.,
Courtroom 6H North, before Judge William F. Kuntz, II. On
PACER, the case — 18-cr-277 — returns only "Sealed v.
Sealed. This case is under seal."
No caption, no parties, no docket entries.
A criminal case, apparently opened in 2018, invisible for
eight years. Inner City Press, which covers the federal
courts, wrote to Judge Kuntz that same day: docket the
letter, unseal the docket sheet, and test the continued
sealing against the Second Circuit's standards — citing Hartford
Courant Co. v. Pellegrino, 380 F.3d 83 (2d Cir.
2004), in which the Second Circuit held that the press and
public have a qualified First Amendment right of access to
docket sheets themselves, without which "the public cannot
know what it is being denied."
Judge Kuntz opened a new miscellaneous
case, captioned In
re Inner City Press [26-cv-4094], docketed Inner
City Press's letter as Document 1, and asked the Assistant
United States Attorneys on the case, and the still-unnamed
defense lawyer for the ever-unnamed defendant to respond.
On July 13 Judge Kuntz set a schedule:
"ORDER: The Court is in receipt of the request from Inner
City Press to unseal the criminal case 18-CR-277. ECF No.
1. The Court DIRECTS Plaintiff and Defendant to submit
their responses to the request on ECF on or before
Tuesday, August 11, 2026, at 5:00 P.M. The Court further
DIRECTS Inner City Press to submit its reply, if any, on
or before Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 5:00 P.M. The Clerk
of Court is respectfully directed to mail a copy of this
Order and an updated copy of the docket report for the
above-captioned civil action to Mr. Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press. Ordered by Judge William F. Kuntz, II on
7/13/2026."
On August 11, the US Attorney's Office
submitted a response that because there was a proceeding
held in EDNY, with no information about it, that is
enough. The defendant's two lawyers wrote in, merely
joining in the Government's letter. Inner City Press
immediately, mid-afternoon on August 11, replied - by
email to Chambers:
"A one-paragraph adoption of another
party's argument does not supply the missing findings; it
simply confirms that no party has yet stated, on this
record, what specific harm continued docket-sheet secrecy
is meant to prevent. [Mr. Radick is listed in the docket
as Plaintiff; cc-ed]
"For what it is worth, while Inner City Press which has been granted in-house status in SDNY and therefore is able to have laptop and cell phone inside 500 Pearl Street does sometime go to proceedings about which little information is available in advance, Inner City Press has found it significantly more difficult in EDNY, having had to advocate for weeks for a trial-specific pass in one instance.... This is relevant to the argument that a member of the media, with NYC Press Pass, could simply have hung around and gone to a proceeding about which there was, intentionally, no information. Inner City Press respectfully renews its request that the Court unseal."
It was docketed as the request was - and
Judge Kuntz set an August 24 oral argument in EDNY. He
denied an Inner City Press request to bring in and use its
laptop as its adversaries did.
Inner City Press appeared. The AUSA
and defense counsel began at one table. Then when Judge
Kuntz came in, he ask the defense lawyer to move to the
defense table - then asked the AUSA to join him there.
Inner City Press spoke first, as movant,
and said it was impossible to know what Sealed v Sealed
was or is; there is no way to get NEF notices.
Reference was made to a transcript of July
7. But since there is not docket, it cannot be ordered. It
is, in effect, sealed. The AUSA cited personal
information, medical information, third party information
and law enforcement sensitive information.
Inner City Press those may be redacted, but must be
justified, as set forth on Lugosch and its own case, US v.
Greenwood. Judge Kuntz asked for the citation; it will be
provided in a memo of law on or before August 28.
It emerged that in Sealed v Sealed or US v John Doe cases, some administrative Federal body encourages judges to review these periodically. But how is the public to know?
On September 3 Judge Kuntz ruled: Criminal
Docket 18-CR-277 stays sealed, he says. His thirteen-page
opinion
accepts the government's assertion that specific,
on-the-record findings justifying continued secrecy were
made at a July 7 status conference — without ever stating,
in the opinion itself, what those findings actually were.
It accepts four generic categories — "personal
information, medical information, third-party information,
and law enforcement sensitive information" — as
sufficient, in the same opinion that quotes Lugosch v.
Pyramid Co. of Onondaga's own rule that "broad and general
findings by the trial court... are not sufficient to
justify closure."
And it never separately addresses whether
the docket sheet itself — as opposed to the documents
within it — meets the heightened standard Judge Kuntz's
own opinion quotes from Hartford Courant Co. v.
Pellegrino: that docket sheets matter precisely because,
without them, "the public cannot know what it is being
denied."
Judge Kuntz stated that he alone currently
presides over or has presided over approximately ninety
cases sealed this same way — "Sealed v. Sealed," invisible
on PACER, invisible on CourtListener — with comparable
numbers likely existing across other judges nationally.
Watch this site.
On September 30, after active outreach to
the First Amendment community / industry that we'll
recount elsewhere, Inner City Press filed its own Notice
of Appeal in the Second Circuit. Watch this site.
